Questions
by EnchanteRhea
Summary: It's not like when the plug goes, everything goes. It's not true that when you leave your pod, you leave everything behind. To be really free, one must take a long journey a journey deep inside themselves.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own the Matrix. All credit goes to Wachowski Brothers & co. I do own the character speaking, however:

**Note:** This is my OC. Say hello. If you wince and turn around, because it's OC and not a canon character, feel free to imagine anyone you like saying this. No names are mentioned anyway. The following text is a reflection on how a person would really feel after being unplugged from the Matrix. Enjoy.

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Questions 

Questions. You've been asking a lot of them ever since you could formulate a coherent thought. Probably even  before you learned to speak. They changed as you grew up, until one day, you stumbled over the most important  one - or so you thought. The question was _'why.'_ You didn't care that there was no answer to that query. You didn't care that each mind, depending on what they believe in, will attempt to give its own answer, directly  responding to what it has been fed with during your entire 'existence' in the Matrix. All you cared about was what  was the 'why' of that feeling that your life was not what it appeared to be. Why do people die, why there has  always been more questions than answers. 

          You were ready to go as far as it took to learn the Truth - and you were given your chance.

It's not like when the plug goes, everything goes. It's not true that when you leave your pod, you leave everything  behind. They don't just wipe clear all that bunch of memories that you had taken as real before they unplugged  you.

It's not like, when you sit in that chair, staring fearfully at the faces of the strangers who are supposedly going to  show you the Truth, you know what you're getting yourself into. You have no idea that down the rabbit hole  there's another tunnel, much deeper, one that runs inside yourself. And you have no idea that under the  circumstances that follow the heart attack you're about to suffer, that's the last place where you are going to want  to be.

          If you knew, I bet you would go back to living in a lie.

When you wipe your eyes with your thin, shaking hands for the first time in your Real Life, your first thought is not  _'I'm free.'_ It's more like, _'Get me outta here!'_. Ironically, for a moment it feels much like when you were still plugged into the Matrix, when with the persistence of the hunter's dog you were looking for the Truth. That's  when you begin to understand that perhaps the plug in the back of your hairless head was the key which  someone, or something - not that you know at this point - used to lock you in a dream world. But unlocking that  very door itself doesn't erase what said dream world had made of you, as a person. That's when you begin to  understand - though scarcely, since you're more focused on taking one spasmodic breath after another - that  being 'free' has suddenly gained a very ironic meaning.

Later, when you wake up all sore and your body is burning with a living fire, you start to realize that you weren't  only expecting to be freed from the lie you had lived in. You were, probably somewhere on a subconscious level,  expecting said 'freedom' to be an escape from the job that didn't satisfy you, the family that didn't understand you,  that redhead across the street who laughed at your lunch box, because it was three years old and didn't have a  picture of the currently most worshipped idol on the lid.

You were trying to escape from all the difficulties of what you thought to be 'reality'. You finally got what you  wanted. Your search is seemingly over. Now you know the Truth.

          Does it make you feel better?

You begin to realize that what you thought a colossal problem before, was in fact a piece of cake. Wear the red  dress or white pants and a black top? Skip one more class to write another poem? Or hang out with others like  you, discussing the pseudo-philosophical issues you've read about on some mailing list the previous night. You  always snuck into the living room, your cheeks burning from emotion, when your parents were asleep and your  younger sister couldn't kick you off the computer.

You never really thought that the termination of your entire species would become something more than just the  theme of some science fiction movie, did you? Or that your survival would depend on more than your grades at  school? Then someone said, 'Welcome to the Real World', and you didn't even fully understand what it meant.  Still, you didn't like what you suspected. 

          You like it even less when your suspicions are gradually proven real. 

Then you wake up from a dream. The illusion that you were reinserted was so clear again. Now you're even less  sure about what _is_ and what _is not_ a dream than before you were unplugged. You look around you. You're scared, your eyes wide open. You study your surroundings that you can't even recognize yet. You look at yourself. You touch the plugs in your arms and you realize that in this very moment, only one thing matters. You start to hate them. Hate your own body.

The people around you, they're nice. They know what you're going through, but they never get too close, they  avoid stepping onto your territory. You start to think that they don't care, preoccupied with their own chores, living  their own lives revolving around their own little worlds. Sometimes they give you small smiles; it becomes a  reason to hate them. You obsess over thinking they pity you, and you wonder, why the hell did they unplug you.  But, at least they know. They've been where you are. And most of all, you're not the 'different' one anymore.

And then you learn that you _are_ different. Even years later, the one thing you remember from your first day in Zion is that girl in a long, sleeveless dress, walking into the elevator. You don't remember which floor was yours. After you got out, you wouldn't know even if your life depended on it, but you remember staring at her bare arms. You remember she had _no_ plugs. _'There you go,'_ you still remember thinking to yourself, _'you're different. Yet again.'_

You wake up at night again, remembering another dream where there was the Sun, and white, puffy clouds on  the sky. The people had only as many holes in their bodies as nature had once planned. You start to think that  ignorance was bliss. You find it scary that you miss waking up in the morning to that once loathed sound of your  alarm clock. You give yourself a mental punch, remembering that it was a _lie_, and this is _real_. This is life. You asked for it.

You're glad there's hardly anything that shows your reflection. You don't care there's probably fifty other hairless  kids like you on the same level. You resist the urge to scratch the back of your neck, no matter how badly it's  itching; you remember how the last time you did that, your hand 'accidentally' slipped and you ended up studying,  though briefly, the plug in the back of your head with your fingertips. You promised yourself that you would never,  ever touch it again. 

          It disgusts you.

And then you realize the bitter reality, and you think to yourself; _'hell yeah, you genius, sooner or later you're  going to have to clean it.'_

One day, you know you delve too deeply into yourself. It hurts. Still tumbling down the rabbit hole; as though, it  turned out to have a double bottom. In the Matrix, you thought you knew yourself. You were proud of yourself, of  what you thought was a deep understanding of the psychological aspects of a human being. Of that 'wise beyond  years' phrase you were once or twice addressed with, by people who were in fact no less wise than you. They  were just much more afraid to roam the unknown grounds, ask the most difficult questions. You remember how  you used to pride yourself in always having advice for everyone who asked, and for those who didn't too.

          And now, you slowly come to realize that everything was bullshit.

You never really stopped asking yourself questions. They're the constant in your life, that has never changed. It's  the questions themselves that have changed. Sometimes you think that perhaps you got more than you bargained  for. That perhaps you asked one question too much in search of your purpose. There are times when you cry the  bitter tears of regret, cuddling a small, rough pillow, curling under a rough blanket.

Then one night or another, you start to wonder how many others that used to sleep under it, died. Two? Three?  Five? Or maybe you're lucky, and by the time said contemplation crosses your mind, you have already understood  your purpose, your role, and the harsh rules the world goes by; enough so that you don't join the dead at your  own wish.

They told you that the Matrix cannot tell you who you are. But neither can the Real world. It's only you, yourself,  who can figure it out. No one will ever do this for you, no matter, man or machine.

You no longer ponder what to put on when you drag yourself out of your small cot in the morning. You're happy to  have something to keep you warm. No matter how many holes it has in it. Well, at least you finally learned how to  sew.

You no longer wince, seeing the same food on your plate two days in the row. You're glad that you have  something to shut up those annoying roars coming from your stomach, when you're too busy to jump into the  mess hall for five minutes to hastily eat your meal. 

Maybe once or twice you smile, seeing a redhead on the street in Zion, thinking that if that's the one who used to  give you shit in the Matrix, then at least he learned his lesson. He had to. Just as you did.

You no longer dream about making it big. Now, you hope that the goop you eat on your ship doesn't go bad. That  you'll have a thread to patch another hole in your sweatshirt. That you'll make it **home** safely three weeks from now, because that's how long, you've been told, your crew will be on the lookout.

          The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

And yes, you heard me. Home. You haven't even noticed when the place you hated when you first came there  became your home. That city, with all the plugless freeborn people who are not haunted by fake memories - it's  now your city too. And some of those very people you've come to actually call your friends.

Now you understand why they never crossed a certain, invisible line, by the time of your unplugging. Now you  know that some things you just have to understand on your own, and no one can help you. They would hurt you if  they tried. They would tell you, _'you'll see, a year from now you're going to be a whole new, different person.'_ But now you see, that by the time you most needed to hear such words, you were alone, you were given that goddamn year to figure it out yourself. While you hated them for not telling you this, they knew that if they did, it wouldn't be much different from what the Matrix did to you.

You finally know it too; you've understood. They couldn't tell you what you're going to be. You had to become it.  Then you think, that perhaps this saved your life, one way or another. 

Now, you look at that newly unplugged kid on your ship. You smile, more to yourself than to him. You catch a  glimpse of his eyes, and in the black pupils wide from fear you see yourself. You know that he thinks that smile of  yours is a manifestation of your pity. But you know it's farthest from the truth as it can be. Because looking at him,  you see what he will possibly become, once he finds peace in himself, not in the new world around him. When he  finds a place to be, a reason to live. That world used to scare you once, too. It still does. But you believe that, just  as you did, he will go his own path, and leave a trail for others that will come after him.

Years pass, but you no longer have the feeling that time slips silently through your fingers. You are more aware of  its passing than ever before. You remember every narrow escape, every return home, everyone who made it, and  everyone who didn't. And you still keep asking yourself questions. But the most important question is no longer  _'why'_. 

          The question is _'what'_.

_What will be the name of my first child?_

_What will his eyes be like?_

_What will the world look like when he grows up?_

_What is it like to live in a peaceful world?_

And you hope, that even if none of these questions are to be answered, before you die you'll be graced with a split  second to think that you lived your life like you've always wanted.

Free.

---- 

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little." – Plato

Thank-you goes to Tasar for being my beta and to the Hardliners for taking the first look at it :) 


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